Many short kids happy as is

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Feb, 2005

The prevailing belief that children and adolescents who are especially short have social adjustment problems and fewer friends than kids of average height has been countered by a University at Buffalo (N.Y.) study, challenging one rationale for intervening at an early age with human growth hormone treatment. In the first study of its kind conducted in a general population, researchers assessed students--grades six through 12--across the full range of heights in the classroom setting. The students were unaware that height was a factor being examined.

The findings show that height plays no role in the number of friendships extra-short or extra-tall children have, the number of classmates who identified them as friends, their peer acceptance, height of their friends, or their social adjustment in general. The one characteristic associated with height was perceived age: Shorter students were thought to look younger than their age, but this association diminished in later grades.

"All of our current thinking concerning social adjustment problems associated with short stature is based on experiences of children and adolescents who come to pediatric endocrinologists for an evaluation of growth," points out David E. Sandberg, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "Those receiving such an evaluation might not be representative of children who are just as short, or shorter, but who do not receive such an evaluation.

"To learn about the social experiences of youths with short stature, independent of whether they are being medically evaluated, we have to leave the clinic or hospital setting and move our research to the community. In that setting, we also can learn about the social adjustment of kids with short stature from those who have a lot to say about it--their peers. Peers are very good at identifying those among them who are likely to experience future mental-health or social problems."

Adolescence can be a stressful time for many children, Sandberg notes, and most youngsters are teased or picked on. He says parents and clinicians should be careful not to misattribute significant social adjustment difficulties to height. By doing so, he cautions, they may risk missing the true cause of the problems. Instead of addressing these factors, the child would be exposed to long-term invasive and expensive growth-hormone treatments that do not produce the desired social benefits.